Toward a Postcapitalist Feminist Political Ecology’s Approach to the Commons and Commoning

Citation:

Sato, Chizu, and Jozelin Maria Soto Alarcón. 2019. “Toward a Postcapitalist Feminist Political Ecology’s Approach to the Commons and Commoning.” International Journal of the Commons 13 (1): 36–61.

Authors: Chizu Sato, Jozelin Maria Soto Alarcón

Abstract:

Feminist scholars are deeply involved in current global debates surrounding natural resource management. Looking at feminists’ engagement through the entry point of the commons and commoning, feminists’ voices are diverse. Somewhat separate from feminist discussions on the commons and commoning, scholars of postcapitalist community economies have recently linked their scholarship to the study of the commons and commoning. This essay expands feminist political ecology’s approaches to the study of the commons and commoning by integrating some insights from existing eco- and autonomist Marxist feminisms as well as postcapitalist community economies. We first discuss a postcapitalist feminist political ecology’s perspective. After introducing our site and methods, we explore the productivity of this framework through an examination of the case of a women-led cooperative that has been producing agave syrup in rural Mexico for the last two decades. To conclude, we discuss several insights this approach may offer for transformative politics.